Fine- I'll get up

You know it's bad and you might be sleeping in a bit too often when you hear your children downstairs making cereal for breakfast(again), and smile as the eldest says, "Wait, we forgot to say the prayer- Hannah will you please say the prayer this morning?" Patting yourself on the back for raising such wonderful, thoughtful children- then rolling over to go back to sleep as you hear your sweet daughter start her prayer only to be jolted awake as you hear, "and please bless Mommy to come downstairs with us."
Man that mother of the year award keeps slipping further and further from my grasp!

A turkey for my turkeys

Can you tell I am trying to catch up on posts? Life seems to be happening so fast these days...anyways, so I HATE the fact that Christmas decorations are in the stores before Halloween. And now Christmas has hit full force on TV, the stores, and even radio. I found a ton of fall/harvest decorations in the clearance bin the other day. And while I always appreciate a good sale, It's like they want to just skip over Thanksgiving completely. I happen to love Thanksgiving, and all that goes with it. In fact I love from October til the end of the year. The changing weather, the leaves changing color (or so I've heard). There is a cripsness in the air. Plus, Thanksgiving is a fabulous holiday- how can you skip it? Football, Family, and Turkey what more could you want?
SO to help my kids remember the holiday and think about being thankful we made a Thankful Turkey. For FHE a couple of weeks ago, we talked about what we are thankful for.

We took turns naming things and I wrote each thing on a turkey feather. Then on the back of each feather I wrote an activity for us to do as a family. Like on the back of the "friends" feather it says, "we are thankful for our friends let's meet them for a picnic in the park." (and then that feather was pulled on verteran's day when we were already planning to meet some friends) or for the "mom" feather it says, "we are thankful for Mom, let's help Dad make dinner tonight and give her a break." And on the "diet coke" feather (oh yes there is a diet coke feather-it is something Mom is VERY thankful for) it says, "Mom is thankful for diet coke, and we are thankful for treats, let's go to sonic and get a treat." So you get the idea. I am surprised how much they look forward to pulling a feather each day. When we get to Thanksgiving all of the feathers will be gone, and we get to spend a little bit each day reflecting on all we have to be thankful for. I can't take full credit for the idea, I put 2 other ideas together that I saw on Sugardoodle here and here but tweaking other peoples ideas is where I get most of mine. It's not super fancy, but that way I can throw it away when I'm done, and it was fun to make and the kids love it- plus it is helping me keep my sanity while the are out of school for the whole month of November!

Cousins

So my dear nephew, Cameron, got his Eagle Scout Award Sunday. We are all so proud of him, he is setting such a great example. He is the oldest boy cousin so he has set the standard. It was great to see him and his family and for almost all the cousins to see each other (we were missing Kory's and Kim's kids).

Anyways seeing them all together I got as little teary eyed. Not only with pride, but also because I only had 2 cousins growing up and they were way older than me- and while I have a good relationship with them now- we didn't do much together. My Mom is 10 years older than her brothers and my cousins on that side are actually the same ages as my kids. My point is I am glad that my kids have cousins, and I am secretly a little jealous of them. SHHHH don't tell.

Here are the Nelson cousins, so on my side of the fam, my siblings are starting to catch up a little bit so now my kids aren't the only ones.

Watching Zach with Cameron and seeing how cool Zach thinks Cameron is, I hope that Zach grows up to be a good example to his younger cousins. So yea for Cameron, and yea for cousins!

Do it for Edward!

Okay so I am an admitted Twilight addict, so when I was redoing my blog layout today I was searching for a cool countdown to the movie for my sidebar. I found one, but it doesn't fit right so I am going to have to do some tweaking. Anyways, I found this pic on a site and thought it was pretty funny and a cute way to remind people to vote. Yes I am actually more Team Jacob, but it's still pretty good. check it out!


SO if you haven't voted yet- VOTE- if not for the fate of the country, then do it for all the sad vampires out there who will never get to vote because they are stuck at the age of 17!

p.s. they would totally vote for John Mccain by the way.

Halloween fun, and a little drama, too.

So, as I may have mentioned we went to Phoenix last week and while we were there the kids got to go to Parker's Trunk or Trick. My big bro LOVES Halloween and goes all out in the costume department. A few years ago he and Hannah dressed as Sully and Boo from Monsters Inc. He made the costumes himself.


His wife is such a good sport, too that year she went as olive oyl, because Zach wanted to be Popeye.
Anyways, this year I have gotten Stephen hooked on my fav kids show (yes I am taking credit for it) Phineas and Ferb. You'll have to go to his blog to see the fun costumes. SO my kids had a great time.
When the time came for Halloween here, Zach decided that he wanted to be a werewolf. And I (forgetting I am SO not supermom) agreed to make him a costume. Here comes the drama part- I had this brilliant idea: I would cut up one of his many stuffed animals and hot glue the pieces to ratty clothes to simulate fur. I still think that it was a pretty good idea and would have turned out okay. So I am cutting a brownish dog that I don't recognize as anything important when he comes in the door from school. He sees the pile of brown "fur" on the table and says,
"What happened to Yoda?"
"Who's Yoda?" I innocently ask.
"My very special dog that I got for Valentine's Day when I was 5," comes the reply.
"What?!" I am thinking, how did I not realize that I was massacreing (is that a word) his beloved pooch? I am officially the worst Mom ever!!
So I call him over to explain my brilliant plan (which doesn't seem so brilliant anymore) and the poor kid is trying sooo hard not to cry, because he knows that he is getting older and really shouldn't care so much- BUT it's Yoda! come on Mom. AS I am trying to show him how cool Yoda's fur will look as a werewolf costume he interrupts saying, "Mom can you please just sew him back together?" (Have we met? Me sew?) "Is that what you really want?" I ask, "because then you probably can't be a werewolf."
"Yes," comes the answer, "I'll just be a......zombie, I just need face paint for that." I'm thinking, "Why couldn't you have come to that conclusion about 20 minutes ago?" SO I am thinking that I really didn't cut him up too much and I can probably get him sewn to look sort of what he used to. Little did I know that whilst we were discussing the fate of our friend, Yoda, my sweet helpful husband had taken said friend into the other room. Convinced that if Zach could just see how cool a werewolf costume it would be, sweet helpful hubby had cut the animal to strips of fur. SO now I have a ziploc baggie on my counter that may someday be Yoda again- but I'm thinking probably not.
Here is my zombie (and my gorgeous neice, Lauren) and I am sooo buying costumes next year!


Hope you all had a fabulous Halloween.

my nephew is famous!

I guess that technically my brother-in-law, Josh, is famous too. Kimmy sent me a link to this picture. Read all about it here

yea uncle steve and Emma too.

So we went to Phoenix last weekend for my big brother's graduation from DeVry, and my little sister's baby's blessing. It was so great to be able to be there for both exciting times. We are so proud of Uncle Steve


it was fun to be with Parker and Granny and Granddad
The kids loved yelling "yea uncle steve" when he walked across the stage.


Okay LOVE may be a bit strong. It got a little long towards the end.


Granddad forgot how much fun it is to take a road trip with kids. Jared was okay with leaving his big boy pants on the side of the road, but was way bummed that he didn't see a coyote in the process!


Just reminding my self why I am not sad that I don't live in a city anymore (you can't tell in the pic, but all the brake lights were on, and I was in the carpool lane)!



but this is why I love Phoenix: (besides my family that lives there of course)


SO here is what I got at IKEA: the VANNA ta da! I'm not entirely sure what category of furniture it falls into, but I LOVE it so much. I call it my mini mudroom.

This is what it looked like before IKEA

And that I why I love IKEA. It gives me one more happy place in my house. And if you want to see how cute my niece Emma looked in her blessing dress head over to my sister's blog
Phew that was a long post!